2014 New Years Revolution

After all those encouragement I received for the past few months, I decided to give myself a challenge. In 2014, I’m going to start a blog which going to record majority my favorite recipe, travel destination and anything I love and cherish in life. The original idea is for me to start an online cake shop, however at this stage of my life I really can’t make too much commitment in it. But I believe my dream of having my own patisserie will become true one day.

Now I should start on my very first blog post in 2014. And my revolution is to post at least one recipe every week. So I was wondering what should I write for my very first post? And I finally pick this recipe that I had fail couple of times before and finally I did it OK job (I think I can do a better job next time).

What I am making this time is a Japanese Honey Cake which also call Kasutera (カステラ),one of my all time favorite.  Every time I went to Japan, I bought it and ate until I felt I couldn’t have any sweet for the rest of the day. It has some bouncy and dense texture that not an ordinary cake would have. And unbelievably the ingredient is very simple, just egg, sugar, flour, honey and milk.

Tips:

-     -  You have to use high protein flour to create the unique texture of the cake, there in this recipe bread flour are highly recommended.

-     -  It may take a while to beat the egg until it reach a stage that you can draw a line without fading.

Ingredients

8 eggs (room temperature)

150g sugar (which I reduce the sugar from original recipe 230g)

50-60g Honey + 1 teaspoon for brushing

50ml Milk

200g Bread Flour

20cm x 20cm mold or if you can use 2 separate bread tin mold

1)   Line your tray with baking paper.

2)   Shift the bread flour.

3)   Mix milk and honey put in microwave for 30s or until honey dissolve well with milk.

4)   Now it time to pre- heat your oven to 170C.

5)   Put eggs in a bowl and mix well with sugar.

6)   Beat eggs over bain marie or hot water until you feel the egg mixture is warm to touch.

7)   Keep beating in high speed until it become pale and able to draw a line.

8)   Pour in the honey milk mixture and mix well with egg mixture, not too long about 5-10 seconds.

9)   Put in 1/3 flour mix in medium speed for 10 second and repeat until all flour mix in.

10)  Beat at low speed for 30 – 45 seconds in order to do some fine turn for the bubble.

11)  Pour the mixture in your mold and put in oven for 30 minutes, to make sure we get amber color crust for the cake check after 20 minutes.

12) If color is getting too dark put an aluminum paper on top and lower the heat to 150C and continue bake for about 10 minutes.

13)  In the meantime, mix 1 teaspoon of honey with warm water to dissolve for brushing.

14)  Put a skewer if it come out clear, mean it ready to take out of the oven. If not continue to bake for another 5 minutes until it cook.

15) Brush the top with honey.

16) Immediately remove the baking paper and wrap the cake with wrapping paper while it still warm to keep the moist within the cake.

17)  Leave the cake top side face down and put in the fridge for at least 12 hours before serve.

Hope you enjoy this simple but splendid cake like I do. Wish everyone have a awesome 2014 and finally i would like to share you one of my favorite quote i saw on my way to stonehenge by Banksy "Your imagination can give you wings..."

Bon Appetite.